


your path is paved with gold and filled with strangers

by Tyleet



Series: somewhere under the rainbow [1]
Category: Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Superman - All Media Types, Young Justice
Genre: Gen, fractured families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 20:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Tyleet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're Superboy," she says with a considering look. "Come on. I'll buy you a coffee."</p>
            </blockquote>





	your path is paved with gold and filled with strangers

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place a month or so after the end of Season 1 of Young Justice. Lois doesn't exist in YJ, so I sort of lifted Teri Hatcher's Lois straight out of Lois & Clark, and set her in 2013 Metropolis with an iphone in her hand. Hopefully that works!
> 
> The title comes from "Somewhere Under the Rainbow" by the Jane Austen Argument. Because doesn't Superman always somehow come back to the Wizard of Oz?
> 
> Thank you so much to cortue for the beta! :)

  
Metropolis: home of Superman, LexCorp, the American Way, and all things that give Conner Kent hives, except for monkeys. Unless there's a zoo somewhere he hasn't heard about. Which there probably is.  
  
All things being equal, Conner wouldn't have stepped within a hundred feet of Superman's city. But, like M'Gann said this morning, they needed a break and it's _spring break_ and she'd never seen the most famous city in America, and Red Tornado said nothing was going on today, and they wouldn't even go in costume, and Superman was going to be off-planet today anyway, so it's not like anything would _happen_.  
  
So of course his super-hearing kicks in while M'Gann and Zatanna are a couple blocks over trying on makeup at Sephora, and he's sitting on a long bench in the apple store. (He tapped the screen too hard on his iPod again. Sooner or later, they're going to revoke his warranty.)  
  
Conner zones most things not within his immediate distance out, but there are some words he's always tuned into.  And just a few streets away, a woman is shouting for--  
  
" _Superman_!" in a stressed, angry voice.  
  
Conner sighs, and puts his iPod back in his pocket.  
  
A minute later he's turned his shirt inside out--the Kryptonian glamour works fine on his face, but people can ID clothes, particularly if they get pictures--and is racing out of the building, down the street, three blocks over to a row of identical-looking brownstones.  
  
He kicks the door down and runs upstairs, taking in the situation at a glance: five men, three of them with guns all pointing at a single woman, who is half-ducked behind a propane tank. Wait, he can count three propane tanks, a couple mason jars filled with blue crystals, a shitload of glass cookware, and the room stinks like urine.  
  
"Is this a meth lab?" Conner has to ask, because he's never actually seen one except on television. He _never_ got called in on drug busts. Not unless they were kryptonite or Sportsmaster related, anyway. Up til now, he wouldn't have thought Big Blue got called in on them, either.  
  
"Sure is, kiddo," the woman says, and there's something familiar about her voice, but Conner doesn't have time to place it, because the guns have all swiveled to point at him, now.  
  
"You can't fire on me," he says, rolling his eyes. "Not without risking blowing us all up."  
  
Five minutes later, Conner has a couple bullet-shaped bruises in his chest, all the guns have been bent into impossible shapes, and the men are all unconscious on the floor.  
  
"Thanks for the rescue," the woman says, stepping out from behind the propane tank and pulling out her phone.  
  
"No problem," Conner says, while she dials a number, and then pauses when she puts up a finger, speaking briskly into the phone.  
  
"Maggie? It's Lois. I'm at 85th and Vine, the fourth floor in 312, five guys down and a fully functional meth lab set up around them. I'll email you my statement. Uh huh. Forwarding you the rest now." She hangs the phone up and taps at it for a second, and something in Conner's brain clicks. Short dark hair, glasses, red smile, confidence coming out of her pores--he's seen her on tv before. He's seen her on tv a _lot_ before.  
  
"You're Lois Lane," he blurts out.  
  
"And you're Superboy," she says with a considering look. Then she steps over an unconscious body and starts heading for the door. "Come on. I'll buy you a coffee."  
  
Conner blinks. "What?"  
  
"Coffee," she repeats, already walking down the hall, her heels clicking on the hardwood. He starts following her automatically. "Unless you want ice cream."  
  
"I'm not a _kid_ ," Conner tells her, insulted, following her out the front door and into the street. He can already hear police sirens.  
  
"Of course you're not," Lois Lane says briskly. "Starbucks okay with you?"  
  
There's a Starbucks at the end of the block--at the end of every block--and before Conner really takes in what's happening, he's sitting at a generic wooden table by the window, awkwardly clutching a latte while Superman's girlfriend sits across from him and rants about drug lords.  
  
"Honestly," she's saying, a little disparagingly, "I can't believe they were stupid enough to bring _firearms_ into their own meth lab. One of those guys had a lighter on him, did you see that?"  
  
Conner shrugs. "You walked into a room filled with drug addicts," he says. "Maybe bring a taser or something next time."  
  
Lois laughs. "I think a taser might have been a giveaway that I didn't trust them. Well, an earlier giveaway, anyway," she amends, and then nods at him. "You think I'm an idiot for walking in there at all, don't you?"  
  
He shifts a little in his chair. "I mean," he says, taking a too-hot sip of his drink. "I just think relying on Superman to keep you safe all the time isn't the best plan ever."  
  
Lois gives him a sharp look, and Conner winces. That's the kind of sentence that would give Black Canary a field day.  
  
But: "I wasn't relying on Superman," is all she says. "I knew there were risks--there are risks with every story. But I'm willing to take them, whether a superhero can save me or not," she finishes with a pointed smile.  
  
"That doesn't make sense," Conner complains. "You're not bulletproof. Your life is more important than some article."  
  
She raises an eyebrow at him. "You're not kryptonite-proof. Maybe you shouldn't go around saving people. They might be able to hurt you."  
  
"That's different," Conner says, because it is.  
  
"Well," Lois says, "even if we assume that's true, I think you're underestimating the importance of the story a little bit. Is it more important than my certain death? Maybe, maybe not. Is it more important than the _possibility_ that I _might_ get hurt?" She slaps the table with her free hand, startling the couple next to them.  Absolutely."  
  
Conner frowns.  
  
"Okay," Lois says smoothly. "I've been working on this story for three weeks. I've traced six suspicious shipments of suspicious materials, all in buildings owned by the same guy, all in the same two downtown neighborhoods. I have enough evidence to convince _me_ that the guy's running a series of meth labs. Do I have enough to convince the police, or the public? Not yet. Four buildings filled with propane tanks. Guys stupid enough to fire guns in the same room. If I decided to play it safe, and didn't take a few risks, not only do I not break the story, I have to live with knowing I could have shut them down before something inevitably goes wrong, and a building explodes."  
  
"You could have made the building explode today," Conner says. "When they pulled their guns on you."  
  
"Well," Lois says, and smiles again. "Sometimes things don't always go as planned."  
  
She goes off on another tangent about the case, and Conner gets a little distracted by M'Gann's voice in the back of his head, wondering where he is.  
  
 _I'm fine_ , he thinks at her. _Something…came up. I'll meet you and Zatanna at the movie theater._  
  
M'Gann agrees, and he can tell she's curious, but she doesn't ask. She's great like that.  
  
"But enough about me," Lois says briskly, and he snorts a little at the realization that this woman thinks talking about methamphetamine components and stolen shipments is the same thing as talking about herself. "What's going on with you, kid?"  
  
"Uh," Conner says. "Nothing."  
  
"No?" she asks, raising her eyebrows over the black rims of her glasses. "You haven't even given me a name to go with all this teenage angst." She makes a vague gesture at his shirt--black, turned inside out and backwards.  
  
"I didn't bring my costume into the city," he says defensively. "And I don't just give out my secret identity to anybody."  
  
She gives him a confident smile. "I'm not anybody." When he still hesitates, she rolls her eyes and says: "Off the record, I promise. Would it help if I told you I know Superman's secret identity? Batman's too," she adds reflectively.  
  
Conner looks at her flatly. "What's Superman's secret identity?" he asks.  
  
"Really?" Lois says, but she leans forward and puts a hand up to cover her mouth as she whispers: "He's tall, dark, and dorky. Wears glasses. Cheap suits. Name of Clark."  
  
Which is the truth, Conner knows. He won't ever forget Superman awkwardly taking him aside after the New Years fiasco, letting him in on his secret identity like it wasn't a secret at all--like it was something Conner should already know.  
  
"Fine," Conner says. "I'm Conner."  
  
"Conner," she repeats, and gives him a hard look over the edge of her glasses, then nods slowly. "Yep. It fits. You can keep it."  
  
"…Good?" Conner says.  
  
"Okay, Conner," she says, whipping out her phone. "First things first. Do you need anything?"  
  
"Do I--what?" he asks, wrong-footed again.  
  
"Needs. Wants. Whichever."  
  
"I'm fine," Conner says, uncomfortable.  
  
"Are they feeding you enough?" she asks, like these are perfectly normal questions. "Do you have a laptop? A cell phone? How do you get around?"  
  
"I'm fine," he repeats. "Uh. I have a motorcycle."  
  
She nods, and taps at her phone for a second. "Done. Okay, what about clothes?"  
  
"What?" Conner asks again. "I mean. My clothes are fine. What?"  
  
"Work with me here, Conner," she says, rolling her eyes.  
  
"I don't need anything from you," he snaps. "Why are you acting like this? With the--" he gestures at the coffee, at her phone, at the Starbucks window. "You don't even know me."  
  
"You did save my life," she replies mildly. "Maybe I want to say thank you."  
  
"You could have just _said thank you_ ," he says, and then realizes he's shouting. People are staring. Hel- _lo_ , Conner. He's supposed to be keeping a low profile.  
  
"Didn't I say thank you?" Lois asks, still totally calm. "Hey, thank you."  
  
"I don't want your pity," he says in a lower voice, sitting back down.  
  
"Who said anything about pity?" she asks, and fishes something out of her wallet. A business card. "I have a soft spot for Kryptonians about the size of a meteorite. That's common knowledge."  
  
"I'm not Kryptonian," Conner tells her, and it's even sort of true. He wonders if she knows about Lex Luthor. He wonders if _Superman_ knows about Lex Luthor.  
  
Lois raises an eyebrow, but lets it go, scratching something down on the card. "Well, maybe I also like you.  Am I not allowed to do that?"  
  
"I think I should go," Conner says, because he can't think of anything else to say.  
  
"Sure," Lois agrees, and hands him the business card. it has her name, cellphone number, and email address on it, and she's scribbled a physical address down on the back. "In case you need a reporter. Or you feel like getting coffee again. Whichever."  
  
Conner folds his fist around the card, and lets her think whatever she wants about that.    
  
She smiles, and doesn't hold out her hand, or anything like that, which is a relief. He isn't always a huge fan of physical contact. "It was really nice to meet you, Conner."  
  
She manages to leave the coffee shop ahead of him, even though he got up first. He gets the impression that Lois Lane is always ahead of everyone else, even people with super speed.  
  
 _We picked a movie,_ M'Gann says in the back of his mind. _The Big Wedding, in half an hour!_  
  
 _No romantic comedies,_ Conner replies automatically, because they'd hashed that out during the drive over.  
  
 _We decided your vote didn't count, because you weren't here,_ she informs him with the mental version of a smile, like a warmth at the back of his skull.    
  
He's halfway to the movie theater when it occurs to him that Lois didn't bring up Superman. Not once. Didn't compare them, didn't apologize for him, didn't try to convince Conner he wasn't all that bad.  
  
He sticks the card in his pocket.  
  
It's not like he has to call.  
  
  
(end)

**Author's Note:**

> The first in a series, so there will be more! :) In the meantime, I'm wildehack over on tumblr, if you want to say hi. Comments are much appreciated!


End file.
